Lucy Kelly, Year 12, Barton Peveril College Perhaps for many young people today, science is seen as a rigid and formula-abiding subject, for which there is little room for creative liberty. In reality, creativity lies within the heart of science, just as it is of music, art and literature. The development of fresh scientific ideas…
Theo Hawkins, Year 11, King’s College School Wimbledon Psychologists, historians, sociologists, and philosophers have attributed scientific creativity to genius, logical method, and the influence of society. Patenting organisations have measured it in terms of originality and usefulness. Scientists themselves have considered the topic, such as when, in 1801, Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) lectured on the original…
By Katie Jones A team of researchers collaborating across the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), and the universities of Vienna, Hamburg, Würzburg, and Konstanz, have successfully sequenced the complete genome of the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri). The lungfish genome is the largest animal genome to ever be deciphered, a record-breaking feat made possible using…
By Sandra Saade, Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer, and Laura-Bianca Pasca Image Credit: Daffodil Dhayaa Humanity will not wait millions of years until Mother Nature will hand it a functionally better brain…[Humankind] will directly, openly and consciously take part in evolution. Corneliu E. Giurgea In Netflix’ groundbreakingly popular mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, we witness the prodigious performance of…
Sophie Thompson The digitisation of healthcare is not a new idea—indeed it was a clear ambition of the NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, which proposed that all patients should have the right to a ‘digital first’ primary care offer by 2023/2024. The pandemic, however, necessitated a much more rapid realisation of this…
Hannah King When you picture a zoo, what do you see? A lone bear in a concrete cage, its fur matted from neglect, pacing listlessly in front of an audience of impatient tourists? Or do you imagine a butterfly house, with a flurrying kaleidoscope of insects and children gazing upwards, eyes alight with wonder? Or…
Jin-Gyu Chang Think back to what you learnt in school about the history of racism, and you will find that it’s a very simplified and discontinuous narrative that goes something like this: slavery and empire (which is quite often portrayed as a good thing, or at least a necessary evil), the Nazis and WII and…
Joshua Mitchell With the pandemic likely drawing to an end, mass vaccine rollout for COVID-19 underway, and climate change issues very much in the mainstream, science has never been so broadly and so prevalently in the headlines. While this undoubtably sparks interest and inspiration, the increasing incorporation of political themes is sowing distrust, ultimately undermining…
Darlan da Silva Candido on what it’s like to work at the frontier of COVID-19 research. When the first cases of Covid-19 were reported early this year, I had no idea how much this would change the world, my life and my career. Just over six months into the amazing experience of working on the…
Dhruval Soni discusses the future of nanotechnology in medicine. The past decades have seen robots become smaller and smaller, until in March last year this development moved past a long-standing frontier – robots became microscopic and thus viable for entry into the human body. Every field of medicine from oncology to paediatrics will be influenced…
